he whole
thing was a Golden Fleece. Commercialism bores me to extinction. I
suppose the world began with trade, since Adam sold Paradise for a
pippin.

Are you still of the opinion that tradespeople should be branded on the
forehead down to the third generation?--you dear snobbish treasure.

Henceforth I shall only deal in sentimental tramways and have shares in
the moral funds--maybe not moral according to the threadbare ideal of
the genus _homo sapiens_.

Surprising that a girl as young as Alice Noah--no relation to the fellow
who built the ark--should just take out legal separation papers in New
York. How can the _modus vivendi_ suit her better than divorce? Perhaps
she wants to cinch her alimony until she finds another affinity. Then
Alice for Dakota. It is foolish to cut your financial string when you
might just as well dangle, especially until you find something worth
dropping for.

Dear, will you please send me a reel of Sirdars? I can't smoke anything
else and no one sells them out here. Our landlady has one eye that looks
up the chimney and another that goes cellar wards and Carlton says that
she always regards him obliquely--never mind, she is a good stupid soul
and I can forgive a landlady anything but perspicacity. I don't see how
our intimacy has escaped her,--to me it looks like the first foreign
sticker on an American five dollar dress suit case.

Why do you write such short letters? Is it because you have but a
limited number of ideas and must dispense them carefully?

What did Philip Leighton die of? His wife, I suppose. They never had
anything in common but the kiddies. That means no more hunts at
Blackburn Heath unless someone careless like Philip absorbs the estate.
Mrs. Philip was a Pennsylvania girl. _N'est ce pas?_ That accounts for
her effulgent spontaneity. Isn't it a shame for me to wax bombastic over
a girl who, if she were just a little brighter, might be called half
witted. She's the girl with the massive mother, who suffers from
dislocated adjectives. They say when she was married her prayer book was
missing, so she carried a cake of ivory soap instead--The mother was
divorced and could have had alimony if she had wanted it, but she had
better sense than to want it. She has venomous optics--the fellows used
to say they flew when she flashed her calciums; ugly as the seven deadly
sins and so mannish that I was always afraid her trousers would show
beneath her petticoats. The giddy old